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Fire Risk Management

Fire Risk Management

Principles and Strategies for Buildings and Industrial Assets

Luca Fiorentini

This edition first published 2023 © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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The right of Luca Fiorentini and Fabio Dattilo to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Fiorentini, Luca, 1976- author. | Dattilo, Fabio, author. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher. Title: Fire risk management : Principles and Strategies for Buildings and Industrial Assets / Luca Fiorentini, Fabio Dattilo.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : JW-Wiley, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023021900 (print) | LCCN 2023021901 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119827436 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119827443 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119827450 (epub) | ISBN 9781119827467 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Fire protection engineering. | Fire risk assessment. | Fire prevention. | Risk management. Classification: LCC TH9145 .F49 2023 (print) | LCC TH9145 (ebook) | DDC 628.9/22--dc23/eng/20230622

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021900

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021901

Cover Image(s): © Possawat/Getty Images, Keith Lance/Getty Images, rocketegg/Getty Images Cover design: Wiley

Set in 9.5/12.5pt STIXTwoText by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd., Pondicherry, India

To my father, Carlo Fiorentini.

The memory of his passion for fire safety, his immeasurable expertise and above all his example at work with TECSA and with fire safety professional associations and also in our family accompanies me in my professional life every day, with the hope that I can always do my best and also leave a small contribution of my own to the world of fire-safety engineering and industrial risk assessment, which he made known to me and which I have always been close to, appreciating this whole world and developing a passion to be part of it.

To Carlo Fiorentini, father of Luca, pioneer and master in risk assessment and fire safety. His passion for his work, in-depth knowledge and love for his family mark our path like milestones.

Luca Fiorentini
Fabio Dattilo

Contents

Foreword xiii

Preface xix

Acknowledgments xxi

List of Acronyms xxiii

About the Companion Website xxvii

1 Introduction 1

2 Recent Fires and Failed Strategies 3

2.1 Torre dei Moro 4

2.1.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics) 4

2.2 Norman Atlantic 6

2.2.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics) 7

2.3 Storage Building on Fire 8

2.3.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics) 8

2.4 ThyssenKrupp Fire 9

2.4.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics) 9

2.5 Refinery’s Pipeway Fire 12

2.5.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics) 13

2.6 Refinery Process Unit Fire 16

2.6.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics) 17

3 Fundamentals of Risk Management 21

3.1 Introduction to Risk and Risk Management 22

3.2 ISO 31000 Standard 26

3.2.1 The Principles of RM 28

3.3 ISO 31000 Risk Management Workflow 28

3.3.1 Leadership and Commitment 28

3.3.2 Understanding the Organisation and Its Contexts 30

3.3.3 Implementation of the RM Framework 31

3.3.4 The Risk Management Process 32

3.4 The Risk Assessment Phase 32

3.5 Risk Identification 33

3.6 Risk Analysis 34

3.6.1 Analysis of Controls and Barriers 35

3.6.2 Consequence Analysis 35

3.6.3 Frequency Analysis and Probability Estimation 36

3.7 Risk Evaluation 36

3.7.1 Acceptability and Tolerability Criteria of the Risk 37

3.8 The ALARP Study 40

3.9 Risk Management over Time 43

3.10 Risk Treatment 44

3.11 Monitoring and Review 46

3.12 Audit Activities 47

3.13 The System Performance Review 47

3.14 Proactive and Reactive Culture of Organisations Dealing with Risk Management 50

3.15 Systemic Approach to Fire Risk Management 64

4 Fire as an Accident 65

4.1 Industrial Accidents 65

4.2 Fires 67

4.2.1 Flash Fire 67

4.2.2 Pool Fire 71

4.2.3 Fireball 72

4.2.4 Jet Fire 75

4.3 Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion (BLEVE) 76

4.4 Explosion 76

4.5 Deflagrations and Detonations 78

4.5.1 Vapour Cloud Explosion 79

4.5.2 Threshold Values 79

4.5.3 Physical Effect Modelling 81

4.6 Fire in Compartments 82

5 Integrate Fire Safety into Asset Design 93

6 Fire Safety Principles 103

6.1 Fire Safety Concepts Tree 103

6.2 NFPA Standard 550 104

6.3 NFPA Standard 551 111

6.3.1 The Risk Matrix Method Applied to Fire Risk 121

7 Fire-Safety Design Resources 123

7.1 International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 123

7.1.1 ISO 16732 125

7.1.2 ISO 16733 133

7.1.3 ISO 23932 139

7.1.3.1 Scope and Principles of the Standard 139

7.1.4 ISO 17776 143

7.1.5 ISO 13702 143

7.2 British Standards (BS) – UK 146

7.2.1 PAS 911 147

7.2.1.1 Risk and Hazard Assessment 152

7.2.2 BS 9999 156

7.3 Society of Fire Protection Engineers – USA (SFPE-USA) 159

7.3.1 Engineering Guide to Fire Risk Assessment 160

7.3.2 Engineering Guide to Performance-Based Fire Protection 163

7.4 Italian Fire Code 167

7.4.1 IFC Fire-Safety Design Method 168

8 Performance-Based Fire Engineering 175

9 Fire Risk Assessment Methods 189

9.1 Risk Assessment Method Selection 191

9.2 Risk Identification 192

9.2.1 Brainstorming 193

9.2.2 Checklist 194

9.2.3 What–If 194

9.2.4 HAZOP 196

9.2.5 HAZID 199

9.2.6 FMEA/FMEDA/FMECA 201

9.3 Risk Analysis 215

9.3.1 Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) 215

9.3.2 Event Tree Analysis (ETA) 219

9.3.3 Bow-Tie and LOPA 224

9.3.3.1 Description of the Method 226

9.3.3.2 Building a Bow-Tie 229

9.3.3.3 Barriers 232

9.3.3.4 LOPA Analysis in Bow-Tie 238

9.3.4 FERA and Explosion Risk Assessment and Quantitative Risk Assessment 243

9.3.5 Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) 243

9.3.6 Fire and Explosion Risk Assessment (FERA) 254

9.4 Risk Evaluation 258

9.4.1 FN Curves 258

9.4.2 Risk Indices 259

9.4.3 Risk Matrices 260

9.4.4 Index Methods 264

9.4.4.1 An Example from a “Seveso” Plant 266

9.4.5 SWeHI Method 267

9.4.6 Application 268

9.5 Simplified Fire Risk Assessment Using a Weighted Checklist 272

9.5.1 Risk Levels 273

10 Risk Profiles 281

10.1 People 282

10.2 Property 283

10.3 Business Continuity 285

10.4 Environment 287

11 Fire Strategies 289

11.1 Risk Mitigation 289

11.2 Fire Reaction 295

11.3 Fire Resistance 296

11.4 Fire Compartments 300

11.5 Evacuation and Escape Routes 303

11.6 Emergency Management 312

11.7 Active Fire Protection Measures 317

11.8 Fire Detection 323

11.9 Smoke Control 330

11.10 Firefighting and Rescue Operations 332

11.11 Technological Systems 334

12 Fire-Safety Management and Performance 339

12.1 Preliminary Remarks 339

12.2 Safety Management in the Design Phase 341

12.3 Safety Management in the Implementation and Commissioning Phase 344

12.4 Safety Management in the Operation Phase 345

13 Learning from Real Fires (Forensic Highlights) 349

13.1 Torre dei Moro 349

13.1.1 Why It Happened 349

13.1.2 Findings 350

13.1.3 Lessons Learned and Recommendations 350

13.2 Norman Atlantic 352

13.2.1 Why It Happened 352

13.2.2 Findings 355

13.2.3 Lessons Learned and Recommendations 357

13.3 Storage Building on Fire 357

13.3.1 Why It Happened 357

13.3.2 Findings 358

13.3.3 Lessons Learned and Recommendations 359

13.4 ThyssenKrupp Fire 360

13.4.1 Why It Happened 360

13.4.2 Findings 363

13.4.3 Lessons Learned and Recommendations 364

13.5 Refinery’s Pipeway Fire 366

13.5.1 Why It Happened 366

13.5.2 Findings 367

13.5.3 Lessons Learned and Recommendations 367

13.6 Refinery Process Unit Fire 367

13.6.1 Why It Happened 367

13.6.2 Findings 370

13.6.3 Lessons Learned and Recommendations 373

13.7 Fire in Historical Buildings 374

13.7.1 Introduction 374

13.7.1.1 Description of the Building and Works 376

13.7.2 The Fire 379

13.7.2.1 The Fire Damage 379

13.7.3 Fire-Safety Lessons Learned 379

13.8 Fire Safety Concepts Tree Applied to Real Events 380

14 Case Studies (Risk Assessment Examples) 387

14.1 Introduction 396

14.2 Facility Description 396

14.3 Assessment 397

14.3.1 Selected Approach and Workflow 397

14.3.2 Methods 398

14.3.3 Fire Risk Assessment 404

14.3.4 Specific Insights 406

14.4 Results 410

15 Conclusions 421 Bibliography 425 Index 435

Foreword

“Fire safety between prescription and performance”.

Fire safety, in deliberately general terms, is a discipline of extreme complex application. This is primarily because, although it presents itself as a specialised sector, it affects almost the entirety of the profiles in which the design of an activity is declined; if we think that the firesafety strategy developed for a given commercial activity conditions the choice of furnishings and fittings, we immediately realise the breadth of the profiles and perspectives impacted by the discipline. Second, because fire safety runs through and affects all phases of the development of an activity, starting from design and ending with daily management, once implemented, the fire-safety strategy must be applied in the operation of the activity and cyclically measured in expected performances.

Considering therefore the breadth of the regulated profiles and the immanence of fire safety in management processes, it is easy to understand how the discipline cannot be relegated among the recurring fulfilments to be carried out once and for all, but must find an integrated place in the production cycle and constitute an opportunity to improve the overall management process of the activity.

A little further elaboration is needed on this point.

In fact, fire safety – particularly in its prevention portion – was perceived as a separate process that had to accompany, through fire-safety design, the technical development of a given project, and that ended with obtaining a favourable opinion from the competent authorities and obtaining certification once the project was implemented (where applicable).

Such an approach was undoubtedly favoured by a prescriptive regulatory approach that, by providing for predetermined standards, allowed for the certainty of compliance once they had been integrated.

In fact, this approach can certainly not be considered the most efficient; the inherent limitation of the prescriptive approach precisely lies in the general and abstract nature of the standardisation and thus in the rigid application of standards:

● on the one hand, they condition the possibility of developing innovative solutions in the case of new works;

● on the other hand, they do not allow the utilisation in the fire strategy of strengths that may be available in existing works and activities through compensation with other requirements that are not fully sufficient.

Granted, with all its limitations, but the prescriptive approach is somewhat reminiscent of the Platonic view of reality in which the project constitutes the ideality and its application represents its imperfect mirror.

The fact is that, probably also due to instances of severe and continuous innovation in architectural, engineering and supporting technological development, a more performance-oriented approach to fire-safety management has progressively established itself, the development of which has gone hand in hand with the affirmation of the centrality of risk assessment and the empowerment of the activity owner in this regard.

In short, the fire protection designer has been allowed to play a central role in constructing the fire protection strategy – as if he or she were the ‘demiurge’ that connects reality to bring it closer to its ideality – with the owner’s guarantee and commitment to ensure that the assumptions underlying the design and expected performance are maintained over time.

Having said this, in such a largely established context, it would make no sense – in addition to being inconsistent with the obligations assumed by the owner with respect to the service – to manage fire prevention ‘fulfilments’ in a minimal and fractional manner in the context of the entire business cycle.

On the contrary, also thanks to the technological development of support tools, the integration of fire safety into the broader system of business process management constitutes an opportunity for overall improvement, both to strengthen safety and performance monitoring and to extend a participative and conscious approach of all actors involved.

This book, applicable to civil buildings as well as to industrial assets, enforces a holistic view of fire strategy design to be coupled with a conscious management of assets overtime to ensure the maintenance of the performances identified to achieve an acceptable level of fire risk from the earliest design stages and from the risk-based identification of fire scenarios by the competent application of sound approaches and methods.

of Safety, Environment and Quality of Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, Direzione operativa stazioni. Head of Safety, GS Rail, Operations. Italian Ferrovie dello Stato Group

Foreword

According to its current technical definition, risk is the potential for realisation of unwanted, adverse consequences to human life, health, property or to the environment. Estimation of risk (for an event) is usually based on the expected value of the conditional probability of the event occurring times the consequence of the event, given that it has occurred. In this context, fire risk management can be considered as the process of firstly understanding and characterising fire hazard in a building, unwanted outcomes that may result from a fire, and secondly developing optimal and robust fire strategies to reduce risk or, at least, control its occurrence.

Recent tragic fire events such as the fire of the Grenfell Tower in London (2017) and of the Torre dei Moro in Milano (2021) have shown the importance of integrating the fire risk analysis from the beginning of the building design process, in order to identify the best fire strategy to be implemented in the construction. In both cases, the composite facades heated up rapidly and allowed the fire to spread faster, pass through windows and advance from floor to floor up and down the building’s facade.

In this book, the authors, thanks to their personal experience in fire-safety design and accident analysis, provide a comprehensive treatise of fire risk management. First, they describe recent fires, failed strategies and lessons learned. As a second step, they define the appropriate measures for fire risk assessment and the acceptable fire risk levels (according to national and international rules and performance-based codes) representing the first step in fire risk management. Then, the authors explain the state-of-the-art fire risk assessment and the fire-safety design leading to risk mitigation.

All the aspects of fire risk management are considered, including, for example, fault tree analysis, barrier performance, fire growth, fire spread and smoke movement, compartments, occupant response and evacuation models. Critical aspects of risk, such as the correct analysis of event consequences on people, environment, property and business continuity, are included. Finally, a note on explosions and appendices dedicated to railway stations, process industries and warehouse storage buildings are included.

The wide experience of the authors, both on civil buildings and industrial assets, along with their clarity and scientific rigor, make the book a unique and comprehensive essay on fire risk management.

Prof. Dr. Eng. Bernardino Chiaia Head of the Center SISCON ‘Safety of Infrastructures and Constructions’, Politecnico di Torino (Italy)

Foreword

Fire risk management in contexts where the magnitude of damage is potentially very high is a particularly complex business. The history of major accidents teaches that they are typically determined by a variety of logically connected and antecedent causes to the facts, revealing that prevention is a multidisciplinary and multi-level theme, which is constituted on a stratification of decisions and controls, to be planned and supervised with the highest time priority.

Largest industrial organisations have long time ago understood that serious risks like this –which shake the foundations of entrepreneurial certainties linked to human, industrial, economic and reputational heritage – need to be matched, even before an adequately articulated architecture of measures, an iterative and very robust assessment system in order to properly understand accident phenomena in their possibilities, create organisational awareness and management competence among the professional figures involved, and reach a risk management plan capable of providing adequate strategies and responses.

Process control measures, as well as prevention and protection measures, while qualifying the organisation in terms of performance, activate investment procedures that are sometimes very demanding; therefore, the decisions connected to this must be carefully weighed, making use of all the available technologies and specific competencies to define the best actions to protect safety.

In this perspective, this editorial work is precious because, starting from a very broad and usable explication of the fundamental notions, it allows us to understand the importance of conducting weighted and customer-specific analyses and decisions. In fact, there are different methodologies and approaches for risk assessment, and it is now clear that the same performance result – in the design phase – can be achieved with a different dosage of technical-plant engineering solutions, organisational-managerial solutions and/or behavioural solutions, which turns into different costs and sustainability of the results for the operators or users of the assets. What are the most appropriate choices? What implications and charges do these choices entail on the operational management of processes? Since safety is the ultimate and common goal of all the involved actors, fire risk management is obviously not a theme that is affirmed only when the analysis is carried out, nor it is resolved in the effective completion of an authorisation process: the assessment process must accompany a project from its birth and continue throughout its life, consolidating its being as plural process in terms of ownership, temporal development and a variety of analytical and methodological focuses.

Risk assessment becomes a mindset to be used regularly. Appropriately fast and accurate methodologies must correspond to this; the use of resources must in fact be modular so that the efforts of calculation, representation, discussion and investment are diversified and concentrate where needed. Conversely, adopting inadequate methodologies necessarily involves a high risk on

detriment of the asset under consideration, for the simple fact that some risk scenarios may be unknown and therefore not well controlled.

Finally, a good risk assessment provides clear and accurate outputs. Based on this, an effective competence network can be established for the benefit of all components of the organisation concerned. It is no longer just a matter of fostering the ability to react at zero time; rather, the foundations are laid for a widespread governance culture causal elements as well as elements not directly conducive to, obtainable only through an adequate study that moves the centre of the time axis away from the moment of the accident.

Preface

Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, asserted that everything in the world flows (‘Panta Rei’) and that fire represents universal becoming better than anything else because fire itself is the ‘arché’, the principle from which all things are generated.

For the philosopher, this is becoming not random and chaotic but is regular and orderly, provided one knows the rules.

In this volume, we have tried to explain the complex rules governing fire in a simple way, using methods, from the simplest to the most refined, such as the engineering approach.

Studying the development of smoke and heat in fires, knowing the effects they have on people and buildings, helps a great deal in adopting the right strategies for preventing and containing fires.

But the approach taken in the book is deliberately holistic in the sense that each individual strategy can have a great influence on the others, and therefore fire prevention must be seen as a whole.

And as a whole, the success (or failure) of the strategies implemented also depends on the behaviour of the people involved, behaviour that must be framed within a safety management perspective.

A volume that purports to present the historical discipline of fire prevention but with a new methodological approach based on the performance to be achieved rather than on strongly prescriptive but often uncritical methods and requirements.

Happy reading.

Acknowledgments

First of all, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Riccardo Di Camillo (P.Eng.).

Riccardo Di Camillo is Head of Fire Safety and Emergency Planning at Grandi Stazioni Rail S.p.A. – Operations, where he deals with all safety issues including permitting activities for the major Italian railway stations. Given his expertise in dealing with very large and complex railway infrastructures as well as with their renovation and modification plans, Riccardo gave us an important and fundamental support in developing all the fire strategy elements in the chapter with the title ‘fire strategies’. Fire risk mitigation should be based on a fire strategy conceived to be reliable over time, focused, auditable, and Riccardo, being a professional engineer specialised in fire-safety engineering, also offered us the practical experience in managing fire strategy elements on a daily basis in complex railway stations and infrastructure. This allowed us to highlight how the link between risk analysis, the basis of a performance approach, must necessarily find fulfilment in the implementation of an effective strategy over time as a commitment by organisations to ensure that an acceptable level of fire risk is maintained over time. Riccardo showed how the effective maintenance of the basic elements of the strategy must take into account the complications associated with the normal day-to-day management of the infrastructure for which he works, posed by the constant transformations during the necessary operational continuity, the presence of the public, the intersection with other infrastructure, and nonetheless the architectural complexity, the extension and the use of historical assets. By masterfully managing these aspects within the scope of his work, relating to all stakeholders, he enabled us to describe in a simple, clear and effective manner the problems and methods to seek their solution in the combination of actions aimed on the one hand at identifying and measuring the fire risk and on the other hand at managing the risk over time.

A heartfelt thank you people at TECSA S.r.l. (www.tecsasrl.it) who deal every day in fire risk assessment and industrial risk assessment consulting activities, overcoming the challenges posed by complexity and sharing the professional growth of the entire organisation that complexity itself poses to all those who are called upon to ensure safety over time. Through TECSA activities it is possible every day to measure oneself against important and unique experiences that impose the need to disseminate and share the lessons learnt so that we can increasingly not only speak a common language but also acquire a common understanding. TECSA gave us the material to prepare the case studies in this book summarising some experiences.

Finally, considering the fact that fire safety is an achievement of the organisations for themselves to protect their people, their contractors and third parties working there, the environment, their assets and their business continuity, it is most important to thank Dr. Germano Peverelli, President

Acknowledgments

and CEO of Sabo S.p.A. (www.sabo.com), a fine chemical company operating for more than 80 years and under the requirements of the Seveso major accident EU Directive. We appreciated the proactive attitude of the company in dealing with fire and industrial risks as issues to be conjugated with the business. We should thank those guys firstly not only for having allowed high-level risk identification and management activities to be carried out using modern methodologies, but also for having established a relationship over the years characterised by seriousness and a common will to assess and manage fire and industrial risks in the best way and without compromise as a fundamental value for the organisation and all the involved stakeholders including the authorities having jurisdiction. Some of their continuous investments for safety and their commitment widely transpire from several summarised case studies presented in this book for which we thank them.

List of Acronyms

AHJ Authority Having Jurisdiction

AIChE American Institute of Chemical Engineers

AIIA Associazione Italiana di Ingegneria Antincendio (SFPE Italy)

ALARP As Low as Reasonably Practicable

ANSI American National Standards Institute

API American Petroleum Institute

ASET Available Safe Egress Time

ATEX Explosive Atmosphere

BFA Barrier Failure Analysis

BIA Business Impact Analysis

BLEVE Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion

BS British Standard

BSI British Standard Institute

CEI Comitato Elettrotecnico Italiano

CEN European Committee for Standardisation

CENELEC European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation

CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics

CLP Classification, Labelling and Packaging (EU Regulation)

COMAH Control of Major Accident Hazards (Regulation)

DCS Distributed Control System

DNV Det Norske Veritas (now DNV-GL)

DOWF&EI Dow Fire and Explosion Index

EIV Emergency Isolation Valve

ETA Event Tree Analysis

EVAC Evacuation

EWS Early Warning System

F&EI Fire and Explosion Index

F&G Fire and Gas

FARSI Functionality, Availability, Reliability, Survivability and Interaction

FDS Fire Dynamics Simulator

FEM Finite-Element Method

FERA Fire and Explosion Risk Assessment

FMEA Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

FMECA Failure Modes and Effects Criticality Analysis

FMEDA Failure Modes and Effects Diagnostics Analysis

F–N Frequency–Number (of fatalities)

FPSO Floating Production and Offloading

FRA Fire Risk Assessment

FRM Fire Risk Management

FSE Fire-Safety Engineering

FSM Fire-Safety Management

FSMS Fire-Safety Management System

FTA Fault Tree Analysis

GSA Gestione Sicurezza Antincendio (Fire-Safety Management)

HAC Hazardous Area Classification

HAZAN Hazards Analysis

HAZID Hazards Identification

HAZOP Hazard and Operability

HEP Human Error Probability

HMI Human–Machine Interface

HRA Human Reliability Analysis

HRR Heat Release Rate

HS Health and Safety

HSMS Health and Safety Management System

HSE Health, Safety, Environment

HVAC Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning

ICI Imperial Chemical Industries

IEC International Electrotechnical Commission

IMO International Maritime Organisation

IPL Independent Protection Layer

ISO International Standard Organisation

ISO-TR ISO-Technical Report

ISO-TS ISO-Technical Specification

LFL Low Flammability Level

LGN Liquid Natural Gas

LOC Loss of Containment

LOPA Layer of Protection Analysis

LPG Liquified Petroleum Gas

MARS Major Accidents Reporting System

MIL-STD Military Standard (US)

MOC Management of Change

NFPA National Fire Protection Association (USA)

NIST National Institute for Standards and Technology (USA)

OHSAS Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series

P&IDS Process and Instrumentation Diagrams

PDCA Plan Do Check Act

PED Pressure Equipment Directive (EU)

PFD Probability of Failure on Demand

PHA Preliminary (Process) Hazards Analysis

PSV Pressure Safety Valve

QRA Quantitative Risk Assessment

RAGAGEPS Recognised and General Accepted Good Engineering Practices

RAM Reliability Availability Maintainability

RAMS Reliability Availability Maintainability Safety

RBD Reliability Block Diagram

RHR Heat Release Rate

Renv Risk for Environment

Rlife Risk for Occupants

Rpro Risk for Assets and Business Continuity

RM Risk Management

RSET Required Safe Egress Time

SFPE Society of Fire Protection Engineers

SIF Safety Instrumented Function

SIL Safety Integrity Level

SIS Safety Instrumented System

SMS Safety Management System

TNO Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzo

TOR Terms of Reference

UNI-VVF Italian Specific Technical Regulation

UVCE Unconfined Vapour Cloud Explosion

VCE Vapour Cloud Explosion

About the Companion Website

This book is accompanied by a companion website: www.wiley.com/go/Fiorentini/FireRiskManagement

This website includes a presentation of the main principles expressed in the book along with a number of pictures and diagrams that can be used during training sessions, as well as a number of fully developed case studies from several domains to illustrate different fire risk assessment and management methods from real experiences:

1) Fire risk assessment of a production plant for a Fire & Explosion Risk Assessment (FERA)

2) Fire risk assessment of a production plant for a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA)

3) Fire risk assessment of listed historical building

4) Fire risk assessment of listed Industrial production and warehouse site

5) Semi quantitative fire and explosion risk assessment of major accidents with LOPA and physical and effects modelling

1 Introduction

Building and industrial asset complexity is increasing, and new fire threats are emerging. Riskbased approach, instead of prescriptive rules, can give a better perspective to various stakeholders (not only in the design phase but also in the operation phase), but an effective fire risk assessment should be based on sound foundations around fire characteristics, building/industrial asset characteristics and people characteristics as well as the interactions among these elements. Fire-safety level should be managed and maintained during the life cycle of the asset and, in particular, during design and operation phases, including any emergency situation that may arise. Fire strategy should be defined, shared and communicated among stakeholders that often have different knowledge and feeling about fire protection measures, assessment methods, codes and standards. This book allows the readers achieving a common and intuitive overview of the process to select, design and operate a fire strategy in a risk-based framework, in which the strategy, as a pool of different measures, is not unique.

Given a fire scenario, the proper fire strategy should be defined given the risk (magnitude and probability of occurrence), the risk-reduction factor, the cost to implement and to maintain the measures, the vulnerabilities, etc. Resilience is achieved when fire risk assessment allows the consideration of the relevant fire scenarios, and their mitigation in frequency and magnitude to an acceptable level, given a defined risk criterion, is put in place and maintained over the time with a sound fire-safety strategy, known and shared among the stakeholders.

Stakeholders should be aware of considering the fire strategy as a common and shared holistic approach that goes beyond the differences among the parties (in primis the ‘famous’ gap among architects or civil engineers and fire protection engineers) to a specific additional and inalienable objective for the building performance: fire safety.

This approach would benefit from the increasingly common collaborative and working environments (even digital) that could solicit a common discussion around fire-safety issues.

According to the complexity of the building/asset under consideration, the readers will gain an overview of the general approach to achieve a structured fire-safety strategy in the design phase to be maintained over time, based on fire risk assessment results and eventually coupled with performance-based approaches for alternative solutions.

This workflow, based on fire-safety principles and from the examples gained, in terms of lessons learnt from real and severe fire events, is regulation-free and codes-neutral. This framework may become the basis of a common fire-safety culture among professionals with different expertise and from different environments, including the people who should manage fire safety during the operation phase under the use cases defined during earlier design.

Fire Risk Management: Principles and Strategies for Buildings and Industrial Assets, First Edition. Luca Fiorentini and Fabio Dattilo.

© 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Companion Website: www.wiley.com/go/Fiorentini/FireRiskManagement

These use cases, built around fire-safety objectives, should nowadays face complexity of sociotechnical organisations using basic fire-safety principles. For professional engineers who want to adopt performance-based approaches (often built around the use of sophisticated tools), this book serves as a reminder of the objectives to be achieved considering the fire-safety fundamentals. For all the involved stakeholders, the content discusses the fire-risk-based workflow to be followed to verify and document the achievement of the performance as well as the requirements for the building/asset owners to maintain over time the required performance levels for each preventive/mitigative safety measure in the selected fire strategy as defined by a consistent fire risk assessment activity that becomes, together with the fire engineer, the main element of the entire process, while increasing the responsibilities of the expert himself:

“The fire engineer needs a certain toughness – and I am referring to intellectual toughness. The engineer must be able to be tested, challenged and deal with matters in a rigorous, analytical and, above all, honest way”.

2

Recent Fires and Failed Strategies

Over the past few decades, fire safety has taken some significant steps forward which have made it possible to achieve high safety standards today in a variety of application areas, from civil to industrial to maritime. The merit of this advance in different sectors can be found in the overlapping of multiple factors that, layering one on top of the other, have considerably thickened the level of fire safety potentially achievable today. A fundamental role is undoubtedly played by the progress made in the field of materials technology, fire protection systems and local regulatory requirements, which, in each country, has imposed increasingly restrictive measures that are primarily oriented towards expected performance rather than the prescription of already ‘pre-packaged’ design parameters that showed great limitations in applicability given the current complexity in each sector and daily emerging threats.

Despite this, the more or less recent news headlines continue to be populated by incidents involving fires and/or explosions that attract media attention due to their severe consequences in terms of fatalities, injuries, damage to the artistic-historical heritage, environmental pollution and so on. Excluding wildfires and fires on aircraft from the list, a simple search reveals the following fires to be identified among the major news stories of recent years:

● Oil depot explosion in Cuba – 7 August 2022 – 1 fatality, 121 injured and 16 missing;

● ‘Moro’ Tower fire in Milan (IT) – 29 August 2021 – no fatalities;

● Beirut port explosion – 4 August 2020 – 218 fatalities;

● ICS plant fire in Avellino (IT) – 13 September 2019 – complete destruction of the plant;

● Notre Dame fire in Paris – 15 April 2019 – damage to historical and artistic heritage;

● Grenfell Tower fire in London (UK) – 14 June 2017 – 72 fatalities;

● Norman Atlantic ferry fire – 28 December 2014 – 9 fatalities and 20 missing;

● ThyssenKrupp fire in Turin (IT) – 6 December 2007 – 7 fatalities;

● Deep Water Horizon drilling offshore platform explosion and fire in Gulf of Mexico – 22 April 2010 – 11 fatalities and complete loss and severe environmental damage;

● Lac – Mégantic crude oil train rail disaster in Quebec (CA) – 6 July 2013 – 47 fatalities (42 confirmed and 5 presumed victims).

It is striking to observe how, despite the long period of time that separates us from the event chronologically most distant to us, incidents of these kinds are still terribly topical and equally nefarious because of the high degree of exposure that characterises them.

In order to understand the reasons that led the authors to write this book, a number of incidents are illustrated in the following sections, with the aim of discussing, at this stage albeit briefly, the reasons that led to the failure of the planned fire-safety strategies.

Fire Risk Management: Principles and Strategies for Buildings and Industrial Assets, First Edition. Luca Fiorentini and Fabio Dattilo.

© 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Companion Website: www.wiley.com/go/Fiorentini/FireRiskManagement

All the incidents are simple examples, among the most well known at international level, of failed fire strategies where the severities have been determined and/or escalated by a number of multiple failures, often occurred in different stages, including the design phase and the operation phase.

2.1 Torre dei Moro

2.1.1

How It Happened (Incident Dynamics)

High-rise building known as ‘Torre dei Moro’ is composed of

● an approximately 60 m high tower consisting of 18 above-ground floors for exclusively residential use;

● 2 underground floors;

● some lower bodies for commercial and residential use, for a total of 77 residential building units, out of a total of 84 building portions.

It follows that the building has a mixed-type configuration and is consisted of (i) 3100 m2 of production area, (ii) 2300 m2 of commercial area, (iii) 420 m2 of tertiary area, and (iv) 3700 m2 of residential area.

The tower is composed of a reinforced concrete frame: the first five horizons of the complex are composed of prefabricated trussed slabs, lightened with polystyrene blocks and cast-in-place completion castings, while the remaining levels are composed of prefabricated latero-concrete panels with cast-in-place completion castings. The staircase ramp is made of a reinforced concrete mix with solid slabs, the roofing of the units above the business premises is flat, while that of the tower is made of prefabricated joists with brick-lightening blocks.

Visually, the tower appears as a parallelepiped with balconies jutting out on the largest sides with a curved profile, while on the two largest sides of the parallelepiped there are two curved sails that cover the balcony parapets and continue beyond the building outline (Figure 2.1).

Fire started on the balcony of flat C, exposed on one of the two side sails, located on the fifteenth floor of the building. Initial fire has been recorded as very severe and fully developed since the beginning.

Fire first started visibly with the presence of abundant smoke, which was followed by the rapid spread of flames over the building via the mast external façade and also involving the insulation panels applied as an external cladding to the main structure of the building. It then rapidly spread to the panels located on the side end of the balcony, further feeding and, above all, favouring the downward spread of the flames, made possible by the phenomenon of the dripping of the polymer constituting the panels and the fall of the same (Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 General information about ‘Torre dei Moro’ fire.

Who High-rise residential building

What Façade fire

When 29 August 2021

Where Milan (Italy)

Consequences Severe damages to the building and adjacent residential premises; no fatalities

Credits Luca Fiorentini (TECSA S.r.l.)

The spread of the fire was rapid and followed a totally atypical evolution, extending not only towards the upper floors favoured by the upwards development of the flames, but also laterally and, above all, towards the lower floors, involving the entire building, up to the shops on the ground floor, including the car park.

Not only were the sail panels unable to contain and/or at least contain the combustion phenomenon, but, on the contrary, they also caused the fire to develop rapidly, creating new hotspots (located in the lower part of the building) completely disconnected from the first one (located on the fifteenth floor of the tower), thus affecting parts of the building that would not normally have been involved in the fire in any way.

Although the flames spread outside the building, they then penetrated inside the flats through the windows and doors.

The flames that spread on the west façade of the tower passed through the outer structure known as the ‘sail’, affecting the materials on the balconies. These acted as vectors for the introduction of the flames inside the flats at some locations contributing to the resulting damages.

The evidence found on site highlights the differentiated damage suffered by the flats. By virtue of the materials on the balconies, these were attacked by the flames, carrying the fire from the outside to the inside. The wind, which was almost always present, especially on the upper floors, helped channel hot smoke and flames into the houses, first affecting the window frames and then penetrating into the flats.

On one and the same landing, for example, there are houses where only one is affected by partial smoke damage, while the one next door suffered a heat stroke that destroyed the rooms. The dwellings face opposite façades.

An analysis of the angle of the flames shows that the material from which the fire originated was located in the niche in the end section inside the balcony, close to the closing part of the sail.

The action of the flames therefore caused the metal end wall of the balcony to collapse, effectively creating a direct communication with the cavity where the PVC rainwater drainage pipes are located.

This service cavity is a single duct extending from the ceiling down to the ground, and in fact creates a high ‘chimney’-type effect, in which the flames also develop quickly thanks to the turbulence created inside.

Figure 2.1  Layout of the building.

Photographic evidence shows the presence of flames at the top of the façade, in correspondence with the cavity, an indication that they are fully spread inside this duct (cavity) where they gain speed precisely because of the aforementioned ‘chimney effect’.

The vigorous dripping of the incandescent insulation triggers a fire at the base of the cavity, causing the rapid extension of the flames that enveloped the entire building.

The fire was somehow brought under control after many hours of extinguishing activities by the fire brigade department, who used ladder trucks to reach (even if only partially) the upper floors of the building, and highly qualified personnel.

It is quite evident that (i) the speed of flame propagation, (ii) its continuous feeding, (iii) its spreading not only upwards but also downwards and sideways, and (iv) its ability to involve even a completely detached façade oriented in the opposite direction show that the initial ignition found its source of combustion in the materials that are used to compose and clad the building.

Significant damage to the attics of many floors above ground level was immediately reported, without the involvement of people.

After the critical phase of the fire (Figure 2.2), in constant liaison with the fire brigade department continuously present at the site of the damaging event, work was started to save the unsafe parts still present on the façades.

2.2 Norman Atlantic

Regardless of the wide prescriptions of the maritime regulations, fire on board is still a significant cause of losses for human beings. This case study underlines how the structural weaknesses of the management system may affect the phase of incident management, which is amplified by the assumed condition of being at sea (longer time required for rescuers to arrive at the incident site). The outcomes of this fragility can be devastating, heavily affecting first the abandon of the ship and then the rescue activities. This case study is explicitly focused on the fire investigation, neglecting all the other aspects related to the same incident, emerging from the complex world of maritime transportation (Table 2.2).

Figure 2.2  Building during the fire.

Table 2.2 General information about ‘Norman Atlantic’ fire.

Who Ro-Ro Pax ferryboat

What Fire on board

When 2014

Where Adriatic Sea (Italy)

Consequences 9 fatalities, 14 lost

Credits Rosario Sicari (TECSA S.r.l. - forensic division)

2.2.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics)

The ferryboat Norman Atlantic was an Italian ship rented by a Greek company for ferry crossing between the two countries. The night of the incident, the route Patras–Igoumenitsa–Ancona was planned, and 55 crew members were on board. When leaving from Igoumenitsa to Ancona, at 23.28 on 27 December 2014, the cargo consisted of about 130 heavy vehicles, 417 passengers and 88 cars. The navigation was regular until 03.23 (UTC), when the fire alarm sprang into action on deck 4, near the frame no. 156. Because of a smoke sighting coming out from the lateral openings of the deck, a sailor was appointed to carry out an inspection on deck 4. He referred that the alarm was attributable to the smoke coming from the auxiliary diesel engine belonging to a reefer truck, which was not connected to the electrical supply of the ship. After a few minutes, at 03.27, the master brought himself to the flying bridge deck on the starboard side and observed the flames coming out from the openings of deck 4. The first Engineer Officer activated the manual deluge system (known as ‘drencher’), following the master’s order. Meantime, the Chief Engineer Officer and his personnel abandoned the engine room because of the excessive smoke, while the two engines of the ship stopped definitively. The ship went in a blackout, and the emergency generator, placed on deck 8, was incapable of providing energy to the emergency utilities, including the emergency pump. At the same time, the cooling team uselessly tried to cool deck 5, but steam came from the fire hoses instead of liquid water. The emergency management, especially during its first stages, revealed as chaotic. During the rescue operations, some passengers fell into the sea, while others threw the remaining life rafts in the sea, with no possibility to properly use them. At the end of the search and rescue operations, 452 people were rescued, including 3 illegal immigrants; 9 victims and 14 lost in the sea were also counted. The ship was then tugged to Bari, where it has been under the lens of the investigators.

The longitudinal section of the ship is shown in Figure 2.3.

Longitudinal section of the ship, with fire compartments.

Figure 2.3

2.3 Storage Building on Fire

The fire that occurred on 22 April 2011 had a large spread on the roof and, in particular, on waterproofing and insulating layers, and a thin-film photovoltaic (PV) system was installed on the roof and on some portions of the interior of the building. Later, another fire occurred on 26 March 2012 on another building of the same storage centre, and it involved the roof layers (waterproofing and insulating) and some portions of the building interiors (Table 2.3).

The activities usually carried out in the storage centre were in the list of those checked out by the Ministry of Home Affairs because of fire-safety concerns but, at the time of main event (April 2011), these were operating without formal authorisation of the Ministry.

The main event (22 April 2011) occurred when the work to install the waterproofing and insulating layers and the thin-film photovoltaic system was being carried out on the building roof (a temporary consortium of companies was in charge of it).

2.3.1 How It Happened (Incident Dynamics)

On 22 April 2011 (sunny and windy day), at 15h00ʹ, probably, the present staff noticed the fire, at 15h10ʹ they alerted the company emergency squad and at 15h20ʹ they alerted firefighters (Figure 2.4).

Table 2.3 General information about the ‘Storage building’ fire.

Who Storage building inside a storage building area

What Fire on roof and internal compartment of the building

When April 2011

Where Nola, Italy

Consequences

Building damages, no fatalities

Credits Giovanni Manzini

Figure 2.4  Photo of the burned roof and the installed PV system.

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